Darwin reportedly spent much of his later life investigating whether or not blonde did indeed have more fun. Or at least that’s what he was telling his wife.

And then there’s American Carol, a remarkably dissociative screed against Michael Moore, liberals, critical thought, intelligence in general. Watching this gave me a migraine. More on the flick here.

Another soulless creation squeezed out from the plastic asshole of American culture.

Just in case you were confused by the whole battle between God and Satan, this graphic nicely keeps score.

And here’s a great quote from Hunter S. Thompson I ran across:

Breakfast is the only meal of the day that I tend to view with the same kind of traditionalized reverence that most people associate with Lunch and Dinner. I like to eat breakfast alone, and almost never before noon; anybody with a terminally jangled lifestyle needs at least one psychic anchor every twenty-four hours, and mine is breakfast. In Hong Kong, Dallas or at home — and regardless of whether or not I have been to bed — breakfast is a personal ritual that can only be properly observed alone, and in a spirit of genuine excess. The food factor should always be massive: four Bloody Marys, two grapefruits, a pot of coffee, Rangoon crepes, a half-pound of either sausage, bacon, or corned beef hash with diced chiles, a Spanish omelette or eggs Benedict, a quart of milk, a chopped lemon for random seasoning, and something like a slice of Key lime pie, two margaritas, and six lines of the best cocaine for dessert…. Right, and there should also be two or three newspapers, all mail and messages, a telephone, a notebook for planning the next twenty-four hours and at least one source of good music…. All of which should be dealt with outside, in the warmth of a hot sun, and preferably stone naked.

Joan and I stumbled across this on some Hong Kong message boards and I couldn’t pass this up. Following up on the awesome CG reenactment by Hong Kong’s Apple Daily of the guy who tried to hump a metal park bench, we found a whole collection of similarly crude, lurid and unintentionally hilarious illustrations from Hong Kong’s trashiest tabloid. For more pics, click here.

A great article about how materialists are more likely to be miserable.

Here’s a really fascinating article about the (welcomed) death of mall culture in America. Seems that driving 30 miles to shop at the mall is becoming less and less appealing with $4 a gallon gas. Some mall are being opened up and converted in insta-town centers. [via Boingboing]

That crazy woman who spend a small fortune to clone her dog might been the same person who kidnapped a Mormon missionary, chained him to a bed and used him as a sexual slave. While he cried rape, she declared her love.

‘I loved him so much that I would ski naked down Mount Everest with a carnation up my nose if he asked me to.’

And then there’s this terrific article in the Washington Post about corporate influence in the Olympics. Was it found on in the news or opinion sections? No, it was in sports.

So what is this Olympics really about? It’s about 12 major corporations and their panting ambitions to tap into China’s 1.3 billion consumers, the world’s third-largest economy. Understand this: The International Olympic Committee is nothing more than a puppet for its corporate “partners,” without whom there would be no Games. These major sponsors pay the IOC’s bills for staging the Olympics to the tune of $7 billion per cycle. Without them, and their designs on the China market, Beijing probably would not have won the right to host the Summer Games.

Alex Kerr argues that one of the main difference between Japanese and Chinese literature is that while Chinese literature is focused primarily on justice, Japanese lit is focused on debt. A sweeping generalization, yes, but there’s a grain of truth there. Watch any Hong Kong kung fu flick and nine times out of ten the plot will be about a pure, if physically fit, guy who runs afoul of some evil corrupt gangster/warlord/high-ranking bureaucrat. The hero loses face and frequently a trusted friend or mentor, but in the end the baddie gets his ass kicked and justice is restored. Watch any Japanese yakuza/samurai flick and nine times out ten it’s about a low level peon with integrity who has to juggle his sense of morality with his obligations to his group and superiors. The film ends with either the main character getting killed or disillusioned with the cupidity of his superiors.

Rarely have I seen the dichotomy as vividly illustrated as with Nobuo Nakagawa’s Snake Woman’s Curse. The film’s set in the waning days of the Edo period, in a backwater feudal estate. The landowners – the Onuma clan – are greedy, corrupt landlords, utterly indifferent to the suffering of the farmers tilling their field. One such farmer, Yasuke, grown too sick with TB to farm and has fallen deep into debt. At his funeral, Onuma orders that their ramshackle house be torn down and that his attractive wife, Sutematsu, and even more attractive daughter Asa work off their debt at their estate. The Onuma’s wife, fearing that her husband might seduce (i.e. rape) the beleaguered Sutematsu, she has her beaten for stealing an egg. The woman eventually dies. Asa gets raped by landlord’s thuggish son, ruining any hope of getting married. She eventually kills herself. No Jet Li-style ass-kicking here. No earthly justice.

Instead, justice is meted out in the form supernatural visitations. Onuma, his wife, and his son start having hallucinations of the dead family and, for some reason never really made clear, snakes. It really bums them out, so much so that they eventually off themselves. This has to be the most passive aggressive revenge drama I’ve ever seen. The poor family suffers all sorts of pain and indignities, but that’s OK in the long run because the landlord will feel really bad about it. It’s the sort of pathetic fatalism that bullied kid might dream of while planning a suicide.

Yes, this is a ghost movie in the spirit of Nakagawa’s Jigoku. And there’s some nicely surreal moments, like when Onuma’s son’s new bride turns slowly into a snake. Yet this strangely disempowering ending felt at odds with other elements in the movie. Nakagawa imbues the movie such a loathing for the rich upper class here that you are practically begging for a Marxist revolution. His critique of feudal economic disparity and in particular the hierarchical mindset that still shapes Japanese culture today was pointed and filled with barely contained rage. I kept hoping that the daughter would take the straight razor she commits suicide with and slash the landlord’s throat in his sleep. But no. The family had debt, as unjust as it might have been, and they paid it off with their lives.

This could possibly be the most hilariously overwrought movie ever made. That’s right, Werner Herzog and Nicholas Cage are remaking Bad Lieutenant.

And speaking of bizarro filmmakers, watch this video of David Lynch putting panties in his mouth. This is creepy even for Lynch.

There’s this EXTREMELY unsettling article about Bush’s plans for a possible police state.

And here’s an even unsettling more article about alternative (or just plain perverted) uses of maggots. Seriously not for the faint of heart. Really. (h/t to Ted who told me much more than I wanted to know about his fetishes.)

And then there’s this tragic/hilarious newspaper clipping detailing that sad fate of Od the Thai circus clown.

What’s funnier than a trailer for a trashy Hong Kong exploitation flick except a trailer of a trashy Hong Kong exploitation flick in German.

There’s this hilarious list of devastating international insults. My favorite are the Bulgarians with phrases like “You’re as ugly as a salad” or “Your mother sucks bears in the forest.”

Finally, the Chinese blogosphere is all a buzz about the run of bad luck China’s been having lately. First there was a massive blizzard that hit 1/25. Then there was the Tibetan riots/demonstrations that started on 3/14. And then there was the Sichuan earthquake on 5/12. All of those days add up to 8. 8/8/08 is the date of the Olympics. Cue spooky music. Along those lines, Liu Bowen from the Ming Dynasty wrote a poem, which is engraved on the Jinling Pagoda in Nanjing, that is supposedly prophetic. It predicts Chiang Kai-shek by name, along with Japan’s invasion and the rise of Communism. I’m told the translation loses a lot and is probably done by someone really into Falun Gong. But there is this striking line.

Hard to avoid the fierce Tiger, Fortunate people live at a mountain village
Vanity cities submerged by vast flood
Fancy skyscrapers became muddy ruins

So according to this, investing in Shanghai real estate might not be a good idea. (h/t to Joan, who spends all day at work looking these things up.)